


No choice at all

by von_gikkingen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hydra (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-07-27 22:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20053555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gikkingen/pseuds/von_gikkingen
Summary: “Do I have to explain what Stockholm Syndrome is? Again?” asks the princess and her smile is trying to be kind but she is worried to be hearing this request from him again.“I understand the concept. This isn’t the same thing.”“She worked for Hydra. What else can it be…?”





	No choice at all

** _“Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.” _ **

** _\- SEASON OF MISTS _ **

** **

He _understood_. And he knew Sam would try his best but he can never understand it the same way he did because he never met Peggy Carter. Never saw the way Steve looked at her.

No, this choice has been made for him. There was no other way this story could go.

His story, meanwhile, was never going to have that kind of simplicity to it, he knew. There never was anyone like that. Which was to be expected – remarkable women of Peggy Carter’s kind were out there, in fact it was harder to find a woman that _wasn’t_ remarkable in one way or another. But since for the last few decades his life was not his own he didn’t really have the chance to find anything of the kind.

The only time he ever came close was…

“Do I have to explain what Stockholm Syndrome is? _Again_?” asks the princess and her smile is trying to be kind but she _is_ worried, hearing this request from him again.

“I understand the concept. This isn’t the same thing.”

“She worked for Hydra. What else can it be…?”

“Worked?” he repeats, a horrible sense of foreboding seizing him.

“I think she might have switched carriers. What happened to us?” says Shuri, her eyes growing dark with sadness. “It missed her. She’s been here all those years. And… Well, I have to admit, her recent track record doesn’t exactly scream _villain_…”

“That was never the right word to describe her,” he says as he comes closer to study the holographic footage Shuri looked up for him.

“Are you _sure_ it’s not Stockholm Syndrome?”

He just gives her a wry smile before focusing on the images. Before letting them trigger the same memory he keeps coming to time and time again…

Even though she was younger then. Even though she seemed so very young to be involved in something so horrible and her dark uniform looked _wrong_ on her when she walked into the room that day.

The fact she was carrying a gun seemed beyond wrong, though for entirely different reason. It was because she was the kind of a woman the word _lithe _was invented for. She just didn’t look like she’d be able to lift a gun, let alone use one. And yet…

“You do know my clearance is so low I shouldn’t even be in the same facility as this guy, right? I mean I literally can’t be lower on the food chain...” she says to the Hydra scientist that just told her to get in the room. And there is just a touch of real annoyance in her voice.

Mostly she’s amused. Just a little, but compared to all the others, all those dead-eyed professionals who made world domination their calling, it makes him think there might be an actual human being in there somewhere. That is what makes him see her – actually _see _her, even through the haze of the chemical cocktail he’s been dosed with to be made more compliant.

“You just need to keep an eye on him for five minutes, Priya,” replies her superior tonelessly. “He’s out of it. He’s no danger to you.”

“Well, _a_, I thought he was danger to _everyone_, that was the whole point and _b_, did you ever consider I might be danger to him? What if I’m a sexual predator?”

The Hydra scientist stares at her blankly for several seconds, clearly wondering what can one possibly say to something like that – spoken with a straight face no less. He’s interrupted by the blaring of the alarm before long. “I'm willing to take that risk,” he ends up muttering, already taking a first step in the direction of the door.

“Because?”

“Part of this building appears to be on fire and I really need to get on that,” he snaps impatiently. “So be a good little footsoldier and keep an eye on him until I come back.”

The man doesn’t see it but she rolls her eyes at him. Which is such an inconceivable thing for someone in her position to do that he actually catches himself wondering how the hell did someone like her ended up here. Even with his thoughts slow and heavy and disconnected he wonders. Wonders about the pretty girl with the dusky skin and amused eyes and…

“I _could_ be a sexual predator, you know…” she says, turning to him. And she says it so… conversationally. As though he was someone one could have a conversation with, not just a weapon to be used. “I mean I’m not. But… damn. You _are _tempting.”

She runs her eyes over him and it is lascivious, but... not unpleasantly so. Because it’s a little more than appreciation. Because she won’t do anything. The way she smiles as soon as she’s done tells him as much.

And then she just stands there, quiet, for a long while. Or maybe it’s not that long. Maybe it’s just the drugs warping his perception of time. He’s not sure. All he knows is the only thing that gives him a sense of time is her voice.

“Do you have a name?” she asks him as the sound of the alarm dies down, replaced by if anything a far more disturbing silence.

“James.”

She seems startled to have gotten an answer.

Not as startled as he is hearing himself say it. It’s the drugs, he's certain. Making him susceptible. He’d answer any question she’d ask him. He’d do anything she told him to do, too. She seems to realize this at the same moment he does. A look comes into her eyes then, as she imagines the possibilities…

But it’s gone in a heartbeat and then she just… smiles. Smiles as she extends her hand to him and says, “Priya. I’m new. And let’s face it, I’m not gonna stick around for long. I don’t have the right mindset, apparently,” she grins, a little self-deprecatingly before adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “People have been complaining…”

It’s only then he realizes he has taken her hand. Her left hand being the one she offered made sure it was his metal fingers he closed around hers. To give her hand a shake as though such a normal, everyday gesture had any right to be taking place here, in this secret lab in the middle of nowhere. 

When he’s not letting go she puts her other hand over his, almost gently, freeing herself from his now unresisting grip. She smiles a little sadly, seeing just how easy he is to control. How much closer he is to an instrument than he is to a real human being. She almost seems to be about to say something about it when the sound of the alarm returns to destroy the sudden silence. And she almost jumps at its new, more dramatic pitch.

Scared. She’s _scared_. Because she really is just a footsoldier, possibly no more than a hired gun and she might not know about all the things that go on in this facility. But she does know enough to be afraid.

He knows more than enough to be afraid _for her_, watching those dark eyes grow big with fear. “So this will sound… But you know what? I don't care how it sounds,” she says, flinching, because somewhere, behind not too many walls, she can hear what sounds decisively like gunfire. “I think they’re in real trouble out there. Which means we’re in real trouble in here...”

She turns to him then, considering. Wondering if she really dares to say whatever she’s thinking of saying. Whether those are words she can be allowed to say to a killing machine. 

She makes her decision in just a second and whispers the words. “Can you hold my hand?”

“Is that an order?” he hears himself reply through the haze of drugs.

“No,” she shakes her head. “It’s not an order.”

He takes her hand. Feels her squeeze his gratefully. “Thanks,” she says and her body language relaxes just the slightest bit.

There are more disturbing noises coming from beyond this room and she’s really scared now. Terrified. And he knows he’s squeezing her hand harder. He knows it by the way she just glanced at him, her expression curious, wondering and that’s so much better than fear and he looks at her and in that brief moment of eyecontact something of his humanity returns. There is something more than cold efficiency to him for just a few seconds. And there is _regret_ when the alarm finally dies down and she lets go of his hand.

“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” he hears Shuri say, her voice making him come back to present. “It’s really not Stockholm Syndrome, is it?”

“No,” he says, his eyes never leaving the face of the woman on the holograms. “It’s something else.”

“She’s very pretty,” comments the girl, her grin growing teasing.

“It’s not like that,” he says and though it’s impossible not to respond to her smile with one of his own he really means the words.

It’s not like that at all. Even if she wasn’t pretty, with her litheness and the waterfall of dark hair she’d still be the first person he shared a genuine moment of human connection with in years. Decades. She was the girl who asked him if he could hold her hand because she was scared. And that was all she needed to be for him to realize that... no, he had no choice at all in this.

“Do you know where she lives now?”


End file.
